Atypically French: Sarkozy's Bid to Be a Different Kind of President

French presidential elections do not usually stir much interest in the United States. The cast of characters seems to have varied little over the years: President Jacques Chirac, former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, the far-right figurehead Jean-Marie Le Pen. The last presidential election without Chirac as a candidate was back in 1974, when Richard Nixon was in the White House and Harold Wilson at 10 Downing Street. And for the past four decades, French foreign policy, whether toward Europe, the United States, the Middle East, or Africa has remained remarkably constant under presidents of the left or the right. Most French candidates under the Fifth Republic have been reliably anti-American, either of the independent-minded Gaullist variety or of a left-wing anticapitalist strain.

This time things are different. Neither Nicolas Sarkozy, the leading right-wing candidate for April's presidential contest, nor his main contender, the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal, has ever stood for the presidency before. Both are in their early 50s, of a different generation from Chirac's and at ease with the Internet revolution. They promise to modernize France and equip it for the twenty-first century. But Royal still embraces the Socialist Party's traditional anti-Americanism, calling, for example, for a strong Europe in order to counter "the American hyperpower," as Hubert Védrine, the former Socialist foreign minister, once put it. Sarkozy, on the other hand, sounds like nobody else before him.

CHARM ON THE OFFENSIVE

Testimony, the first of Sarkozy's books to be published in English, is partly an unapologetic charm offensive aimed at a U.S. audience. Most of it is a translation of Témoignage, a best-selling proto-manifesto published in French last summer; the rest includes chapters from Libre, a chronicle of Sarkozy's political awakening from his student days onward, as well as some fresh material. Two elements in the book startle. The first is Sarkozy's stated admiration for the United States, which is unorthodox for a French politician. The second is his equally unusual candor about France's failings.

Sarkozy's respect for the United States was already explicit in Témoignage; in Testimony, it is forthright from page one: "I have no intention of apologizing for feeling an affinity with the greatest democracy in the world." On a trip last September to New York, where he commemorated 9/11, and Washington, D.C., where he joined President George W. Bush, he stunned French commentators -- and French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin -- by criticizing "French arrogance" over the war in Iraq. Sarkozy called for a "new era in transatlantic relations" and declared that it was "unthinkable for Europe to forge its identity in opposition to the United States." French ambivalence toward, or even suspicion of, the United States, he asserted, in addressing Americans, "reflects a certain envy of your brilliant success."

In Testimony, Sarkozy further warms to this theme. France and the United States, he argues, cannot afford to be anything but firm friends. They are intimately linked by a shared revolutionary history, based on individual liberty and republicanism. France owes a debt to the United States for its liberation of France from Nazi occupation in 1944. Today, the two countries face common challenges: terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and the rise of China, India, and Brazil. To these historical and strategic ties, Sarkozy adds a personal affinity: a visceral anticommunism, inherited from his father, who settled in France in 1948 after fleeing communist Hungary. Rebuilding trust between France and the United States, Sarkozy argues, would preclude neither frank exchanges nor disagreements. He readily criticizes the failures of U.S. environmental policy, for example, but does not want such differences to spiral into a damaging diplomatic fallout.

This argument, and most of his views on foreign affairs, puts Sarkozy directly at odds with the Gaullist, independent-minded, Arabist tradition that has so dominated French diplomacy. Sarkozy calls for more support of Israel: "We cannot make our relations with Israel conditional on the ups and downs of our interests in Arab societies." He advocates ending relations with African states that are based on opaque networks and personal links to their leaders and argues for a more transparent, democratic approach from Paris. He refuses to rule out any options in dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions. He even urges less intransigence in regard to protecting the French language, suggesting that the French should be ready to speak English more often. For a French politician during an election campaign, this is breathtakingly bold.

Yet, Sarkozy is even less sparing in his criticism of French domestic policy. Over the past 25 years, he argues, France has become a stagnant society that has destroyed the value of work and deluded itself into thinking that its welfare system is sustainable. Unemployment, which now stands at 8.6 percent, has not dipped below 8 percent over the past generation. The French have one of the shortest workweeks in the Western world. France's GDP, which was bigger than the United Kingdom's in the 1970s, is now 5 percent smaller. French public debt amounts to a hefty 66 percent of the country's GDP, compared with 42 percent for the United Kingdom. While the rest of Europe has tried to adapt to globalization, France has denied it, hiding behind a damaging credo of antiliberalism. The country, Sarkozy writes, "cannot act like the Gallic village surrounded by Roman camps" because "only in Asterix cartoons does the Gallic village win."